


tell me again about how it hurts

by Wildehack (tyleet)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Monster!Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 02:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19347685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: After Ny-Ålesund, Jon goes to the prison and compels his way as far as Elias’s cell block before a guard stops him. There’s a bright streak of blood dripping unchecked from the guard’s nose, and his eyes are vacant. He says calmly: “There are twenty people between us, and I’m prepared to sacrifice them all if you keep walking.”





	tell me again about how it hurts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zalia on tumblr, with the prompt 'If you want a monster, i will give you a monster.' 
> 
> Title is from dodie's "Monster," which I've been thinking about nonstop for like a month now

After Ny-Ålesund, Jon goes to the prison and compels his way as far as Elias’s cell block before a guard stops him. There’s a bright streak of blood dripping unchecked from the guard’s nose, and his eyes are vacant. He says calmly: “There are twenty people between us, and I’m prepared to sacrifice them all if you keep walking.”   
  
“Nineteen murderers and one prison guard? For _you_?” Jon demands, rage a hot prickle up and down his arms. “I might call that a decent trade.”   
  
“Why, Jon,” the guard says with a little purr. “I’m touched. However--” He jerks his gaze towards the nearest cell. “Dominguez in there was wrongfully convicted, and Robbins has a little daughter who’s turning nine tomorrow. She’s planning to see her father on visiting day, next week. Even Stephens here--” and the guard rolls his shoulders expressively, “isn’t all bad. He’s just got engaged. Are you really that much a monster?”   
  
Jon sees red, furious and hating himself. _If you want a monster,_ he finds himself thinking, _I will give you a monster_. He--reaches out for Stephens the prison guard with an invisible tendril of himself, and tries to tug him **away** from Elias. He touches something there is no words for, with that part of himself he also doesn’t have words for.

It’s Elias, of course.

Jon flinches back from the feeling, and the guard seizes up briefly, blood once again streaming from his nose. After a moment the guard laughs. “You’re doing very well,” he says fondly. “But that’s enough for now, I think. Unless you really do want him dead.”   
  
Jon doesn’t want anyone else dead. He doesn’t.   
  
“There you are,” the guard says, satisfied.   
  
Jon goes.   
  
*

Ny-Ålesund was. 

  
Bad.   
  
What happened to Basira--  
  
What Jon did--  
  
Someone will answer for it.   
  
The Eye, Jon thinks grimly, _is going to answer for it_.

*  
  
So Jon can’t force his way into the prison.   
  
There are other ways for the Archivist of the Magnus Institute to get at someone.

Jon goes back to the Archives and crashes into an exhausted sleep for three hours--just enough to take the edge off his weariness. When he wakes he feeds himself a new statement, makes a strong cup of tea, and locks himself in his office. He doesn’t even need to avoid anyone: Daisy’s still at the hospital with Basira, and god knows where Melanie is these days. He hasn’t seen Martin in weeks.

He takes a sip of the tea and closes his eyes. He concentrates.   
  
When he opens them, a new tape has appeared on his desk.   
  
He puts it into the recorder and hits play, and instantly Elias’s familiar, amused voice fills the room.   
  
“As to whether he’ll ever hear this--maybe he’ll get the tapes, maybe he won’t. The recordings have helped so far, so....”

“Do you know what they are?” It’s Basira’s voice. Jon isn’t surprised, not after what she did in Norway, but...it’s still a blow. The Archives are _his_ , and Elias has been--stealing his people and giving them away left and right, like Jon wouldn’t have anything to say about it, like he imagined there wouldn’t be _consequences_.  
  
“What a question,” Elias answers her, and the way he says it is an answer of itself.   
  
“So you won’t see him? But you’re happy for him to hear our conversations?”

“He can listen all he wants, but--he’s at a very delicate stage right now, and I fear my presence would be a, uh.” With dark humor. “A _distraction_. I’ve made it clear my cooperation is contingent on his not seeing me. And my terms have been accepted thus far.”

The tape dissolves into static, and Jon takes a deep breath. He takes it back a few seconds-- _he can listen all he wants_ \--and focuses on the sound of Elias’s voice. He calls to mind the feeling from earlier--touching the invisible thing he instinctively knew was Elias, some piece of him that exists somewhere beyond the physical.   
  
Come on, Jon thinks, and **looks** for it. “Come on,” he finds himself murmuring out loud, half for the benefit of the second tape recorder that clicks on for him. “Where are you.”

When at last he finds it--a delicate little heat shimmer in the air over St John’s hospital, not with his body at the prison at all--Jon grabs at it, hard as he can.   
  
There’s a brief second where he feels Elias’s genuine shock, and something brighter that might be pain, or violation, or--intimacy--and then Jon concentrates and **yanks,** pulling the thing-that-isn’t-Elias into the room with him.   
  
The effect is immediate and overwhelming, a strange double vision slamming down on them both. He is in his office, clutching his still-hot tea, and Elias is sitting across the desk from him in a three-piece suit, flicking open a pocket watch.   
  
He is also in a concrete cell, sat on a metal stool across from the simple cot where Elias is half-sitting up, looking as disorderly as Jon has ever seen him. His hair is slightly mussed, there’s a blanket half-draped over him, and he’s gasping in air, like whatever Jon just did, it’s having a physical effect.  He’s also barefoot. Jon can see blue veins tracing over the arch of his foot.   
  
“Bold, Jon,” both Eliases say in unison, breathless. “Very bold.”   
  
“What did you do to Basira,” Jon demands, but he finds whatever he’s doing is having an effect on him, too. His heart is racing, and he feels dizzy with the effort of keeping the double vision up. The compulsion is weak as a result, barely there at all.   
  
“We both know you can do better,” Elias says, and the him in prison lifts a hand to his hair, smoothing it into its usual order with one light movement. Without thinking about it at all, the Jon in the prison gets up from his stool and grabs Elias by the collar.

All four of them gasp, but the touch anchors him, lets him say “ **Tell me what you did to Basira** ,” with real force behind it this time.   
  
“I made her ours,” Elias tells him at once. His eyes are very wide, his pupils blown black. “She wanted a weapon, so I made her one.”   
  
In the church in Ny-Ålesund, eyes opened up in Basira’s palms. The irises glowed with a cruel light, and anyone Dark who looked at her stopped dead in their tracks and couldn’t move.  
  
Together, Jon and Basira killed the Dark, extinguished it in the brutal light of their Gaze.   
  
The eyes have been weeping blood ever since, until Basira was grey with blood loss and could barely speak. She's on her third emergency transfusion. She might still die.   
  
“ **Will she live** ,” both Jons demand, and the Elias in the Archives shrugs.   
  
“Probably,” the Elias in prison says. “If she resigns herself to the Eye as thoroughly as you have, certainly.”   
  
“Is she still human?” the Jon at the desk asks, and the Elias holding the pocket watch shrugs.   
  
“More than you are,” he says.   
  
“Could you let her go?” both Jons ask, and both Eliases smile.     
  
“Why would we?” Elias answers him in prison.   
  
“They are mine,” Jon snaps at him in the prison, fisting his hands in the cheap cloth of Elias’s uniform. “Martin, Basira, Daisy, Melanie--you can’t just _take_ them.”   
  
“They are _ours_ ,” both Eliases insist sharply. “They belong to the Beholding, and we are both its agents.”   
  
“You kept Basira a secret from me,” Jon points out at the desk, still seething. “You helped her keep it from me. You’ve helped _Martin_ keep secrets from me.”   
  
“You weren’t ready,” Elias says, but he says it gently. In prison, he brings his hands up to cup Jon’s elbows, like they’re embracing. His thumb strokes idly at the soft inner skin of his arm, and Jon gives an involuntary shudder. “If it helps, you’ve really astounded me with your progress today.”   
  
“Why can’t I see you?” both Jons demand, and in prison Elias’s eyes drop to Jon’s mouth.   
  
Glancing down at his pocket-watch, the Elias in the Archives answers him briskly: “You’re not ready for that either, Jon. Now--we just have a minute before the effort overcomes you. And of course I’ll be ready for you next time. Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”  
  
Jon doesn’t need to Know Elias is right to know he’s right--he can feel himself straining with the effort, knows he can’t last much longer. He swallows, then swallows again. “ **What do you want from me**?” he asks finally.

“I want you to be the best Archivist I’ve had yet,” Elias tells him in the Archives, and snaps the pocket watch closed. He smiles a little, coldly. “I want you to enjoy your work, if possible.”

The other Elias arches up and kisses him. His lips are warm and human, and his fingers tighten on Jon’s elbows, urging him forward with a tiny, satisfied noise.  
  
Jon jerks back, flinches so hard he breaks the connection.

He lands in his body, in his empty office, thoroughly alone.

He feels like he’s just been run over by a _train_ , his head throbbing badly enough that his whole body is aching with it. He also feels--awake, for the first time in days. Like what he did in Norway is finally receding back enough for him to really see things. He shudders. 

The tape recorder is still going. Like always, Jon is being watched.   
  
“If Basira dies,” he says roughly into the recorder, “I swear to God I’ll blind myself.”

  
The recorder clicks off of its own accord.   
  
*   
  
The wounds in Basira’s hands close up, and she's released from the hospital. 

Jon gets a phone call from Wandsworth. He’s been added to an inmate’s visitor list, if he’d like to take advantage of it next month.   
  
Jon doesn’t go. 

**Author's Note:**

> elias is the hottest character on the show, change my mind


End file.
